The present invention relates to a system including connections between light waveguide buses (optical fiber buses) and coaxial cable buses operating according to the token passing principle (token bus). A system of this type is disclosed by M. Faugeras, C. Pontoise, F. J. Lecontein in an article entitled "Industrial LAN Using a Token Passing Bus Access Method With Optical Links," in EFOC/LAN 88. In this prior art system, carrier band coaxial cable buses are connected by way of electro-optical transceivers with, for example, an active optical star coupler. Two light waveguides are provided per transceiver for the purpose of transmitting and receiving. The transmit lightwave conductors of all transceivers are connected with a branch-off member in the star coupler, each by way of an optical transmitter. The star coupler and the branch-off member are connected with one another by a series connection of a carrier band demodulator and a carrier band modulator.
In the above-described prior art arrangement, the carrier band signals are fed to the light waveguides conforming in waveform and frequency. Therefore, the transmission distance is relatively short. Signal regeneration for analog signals is very difficult, especially with regard to high frequencies. Worldwide there is no signal regenerator available which would be suitable for signal transmission in the above described prior art arrangement, so that the prior art arrangement is not suitable for a large, spatial, distributed, local area network. For large, spatial, distributed, local area networks the optical segments of the networks are not in compliance with optical token bus standards.